High speed automatic wrapping machines of the horizontal form-fill-seal variety have been used for many years. Most of these machines utilize forming heads and have a roll of flat film mounted above the product conveying and wrapping section of the machine. The roll of flat film is mounted so that the axis of the core upon which the film is wound is transverse to the axis of the machine and the film is fed from the roll over a series of rolls having various functions such as guidance, power film driving, etc. and down over forming heads which form the film around the product. On some of these machines which have been designed primarily for shrink packaging the product size capability of the machine is quite large. For instance, many of the machines will wrap a product up to 16 inches wide by 4 inches high and will accept film rolls 40 inches long. These rolls are very heavy and can weigh over 80 pounds and because the forming head is large, the rolls are mounted quite high above the machine.
The standard procedure for loading a full roll of film onto a machine is to use two people, one at either side of the machine, so that they can together lift the film roll up to the height required to load it into the bearings which support it for unwinding. The lift is generally to above shoulder height and when installing a large roll, it takes two men to do the job. The alternative system for loading film is to install a small overhead crane to pick up the roll and spindle and load it into place. There are three difficulties with the overhead crane. The first is that in some buildings it is difficult to install an overhead crane; the second is that an overhead crane can be expensive; the third occurs when customers move their machines from place to place. If a machine is moved, of course, it would be necessary to move the overhead crane. This is relatively impractical.
Because it is so difficult to load film into place in such high speed automatic wrappers, some of them are equipped with dual roll unwinds. The dual roll unwind permits the film to be loaded in advance when the personnel are available to do the job and and then when the first roll runs out, the second roll is fed into the system. The dual roll unwinding adds size and complexity to the film handling system of the machine.
The object of this invention is to provide a unique system for loading rolls of film into a high speed automatic wrapper whereby a single operator can load a roll of film without the aid of an overhead crane and without the complexity of dual roll unwinding.